At this year’s Met Gala, many of the celebrity guests will already have experience dressing for the theme. This year’s exhibition honors the long career of designer Karl Lagerfeld, who not only famously revived Chanel in the ’80s and steered the maison until his passing in 2019, but also designed for Fendi, Chloé, Patou, his own namesake labels, and several others throughout the years. In fact, Lagerfeld’s career stretches back long before celebrities started regularly wearing designer labels on the red carpet—yet his gowns were ever present in our modern age of designer celebrity dressing. Here, an expansive look back at some of Kaiser Karl’s biggest red carpet hits.
Lily-Rose Depp at the 2019 Met Gala
For the “Camp”-themed Met Gala, Rose wore a dress that’s older than she is. The simple black look, overlaid with opulent gold chains, came from Chanel’s spring 1992 haute couture collection. Originally worn on the runway by Christy Turlington, the dress may rank among one of Lagerfeld’s most memorable of all time. Penelope Cruz also wore it in Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, and its design has been referenced everywhere from the runway of RuPaul’s Drag Race to the pages of the Sailor Moon manga.
Chloë Sevigny at Barneys in 2013
Even if he had never been hired by Chanel, Lagerfeld would have gone down in the fashion history books. His two-decade run at Chloé helped burnish the legitimacy of ready-to-wear at a time when couture still dominated. This was also an era when high fashion brands had not completely taken over the red carpet (thus, there are few pictures of celebrities in his designs), but Chloë Sevigny—of course—managed to source Karl’s famous guitar-inspired dress from 1981 to wear to a Barneys event in 2013.
Jennifer Lopez at the 2001 Oscars
This metallic gray Chanel dress J.Lo wore to the 2001…
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